


the tower room

by aeriallon



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bottom John Murphy (The 100), Cambridge, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Nerd Bellamy Blake, Roommates, Service Top, Theatre, and they were ROOMMATES, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 12:16:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18828517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeriallon/pseuds/aeriallon
Summary: In which Cambridge graduate students Bellamy Blake and John Murphy get the best room in the college. The only problem is, they're sharing it.I can outlast this guy in my sleep,Bellamy thought, glaring down at Murphy. But that had been the first week of Michaelmas; and now the term was almost over, and John Murphy was still there.





	the tower room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pietoperdition](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pietoperdition/gifts).



> _He came to read. Two or three books_  
>  _are open; historians and poets._  
>  _But he only read for ten minutes,_  
>  _and gave them up. He is dozing_  
>  _on the sofa. He is fully devoted to books_  
>  _but he is twenty-three years old, and he's very handsome;_  
>  _and this afternoon love passed_  
>  _through his ideal flesh, his lips._  
>  _Through his flesh which is full of beauty  
>  _ _the heat of love passed;  
>  _ _without any silly shame for the form of the enjoyment._
> 
> _—CP Cavafy (1924)_

 

_I. Michaelmas_

For the first time in his academic life, Bellamy Blake was the foreign student. And the good news, he supposed, was that, also for the first time in his life, he got the best room. There was no really defensible reason for overseas students to get the best rooms at Burton College, Cambridge, unless it was for occult PR purposes; maybe the mistress thought they’d leave good reviews on Yelp or something. But whatever the rationale, he was in one of the largest and oldest sets in the entire college, right above the gated entrance, with its own kitchenette and a sealed-off fireplace with a marble mantel, as well as a stunning view on all four sides and a turreted ceiling.

“It’s like they want us to leave good reviews on Yelp or something,” said the other foreign student, a slight, sharp-featured Canadian kid Bellamy had disliked on sight.

And that was the bad news; maybe because they were both from North America, or because they were both reading English, but the college had put them in a double.

Bellamy said nothing, just continued grimly unpacking his battered steamer trunk. The kid, John Murphy, had immediately announced he was a thespian and only cared about English lit inasmuch as it might help him get into Footlights and thence the Edinburgh fringe and maybe, someday, onto BBC4; whereas Bellamy said as little about himself as possible, and hoped his bookshelves, his serious black-spined _Complete Works of Milton_ , his Henry Vaughan and his Fulke Greville, made it clear that above all else he loved prosody, loved literature—loved scholarship, really, entirely for its own sake, and wasn’t interested in making friends.

He could scare the kid off. Murphy wouldn’t be the first roommate Bellamy had gotten rid of, mostly just by being a maximum nerd and extremely fucking boring. He wasn’t an older student for nothing—both he and Murphy were affiliated, which meant they already had their bachelor’s degrees from elsewhere. Thanks to Cambridge being such a ludicrously high-octane experience, though, they had to start over again in the middle of the BA, and take examinations along with the other undergraduates. Even so, Bellamy was older than Murphy; from the lofty age of twenty-six he looked down at Murphy’s twenty-two with quiet derision and no small amount of internal eye-rolling. Like all luvvies, Murphy behaved like a child; when their first grant cheques came through, Bellamy invested in as many Loeb editions as he could sensibly afford and a plain white electric tea kettle, while Murphy bought a case of Prosecco, an expensive-looking raincoat, and a full college gown with a hood he wasn’t yet allowed to wear.

Bellamy rented a used gown, papery thin, when he needed one for high table. He didn’t go to high table unless he was invited, and he wasn’t invited often. He didn’t care. He was here for Milton, not—whatever it was Murphy was here for, which mostly seemed to involve putting large sums of money on his tab at the college bar, collecting feather boas (which he’d liberated from various pantos and revues), and swanning around the green, where signs read clearly KEEP OFF THE GRASS, declaiming from the more lurid bits of Middleton and Ford. Like most theatre people, he took up too much space, wherever he was. Bellamy hated theatre people.

 _I can outlast this guy in my sleep_ , Bellamy thought, glaring down at Murphy. But that had been the first week of Michaelmas; and now the term was almost over, and John Murphy was still there.

•

In fact, the more he tried to get shut of John Murphy, the more he seemed to cling to Bellamy, like a particularly recalcitrant cockleburr, or like Aesop’s fable about the wind trying violently to blow away the traveler’s cloak, instead of letting the sun do it slowly. Despite being able to read that very fable in both Greek and Latin, Bellamy continued to pretend he wasn’t thinking about it, and he continued trying to annoy Murphy enough to make him move out, because Murphy was a bloody nuisance. He read Bellamy’s books, wore his clothes, used his pens and paper, ate his food (complaining about the honey leaking out the bottom of his crumpets, even as he added more), and, as if to complete the fairy-tale horror, slept in his bed. More than once Bellamy had cycled back to college after lectures or supervision to find Murphy swaddled up in his white feather duvet, breathing evenly and peacefully, a bright spot of warm colour on his cheek where it had been pressed against Bellamy’s pillow. “I like your duvet,” was all Murphy would say, yawning and stretching luxuriously before curling back up like a cat.

“Get your own, then,” Bellamy said automatically, distracted by the way Murphy smiled at him while he was still half-asleep, though not so distracted he couldn’t grasp one corner of the duvet firmly and dump Murphy out of bed onto the floor, in an appealing sprawl of limbs, laughing.

Not only was he undaunted by Bellamy’s rigid house rules and brittle, deliberately unwelcoming demeanor, he seemed to have his own ideas about chasing Bellamy off and having the double to himself. They were both eligible to live in the extremely pedestrian, post-1980s brick graduate housing down at the new college building, but neither of them would budge.

“You could move down to Foxford Court,” suggested Murphy, licking butter off his upper lip. It was Bellamy’s butter, and his milk in Murphy’s tea. Bellamy tried to scowl but Murphy had made muffins in the tiny kitchen, and they were really very good, especially with the sour cherry jam Murphy had stolen from the housekeepers. “The library’s open all night. I hear Milton’s chamber pot is on permanent display.”

“Yes, one of us certainly ought to move,” retorted Bellamy. He kept his face impassive, and buttered another muffin.

“I should think you’d welcome the company of more _mature_ individuals,” Murphy went on, blithely. He’d immediately adopted fake British diction upon arriving at Burton and it drove Bellamy insane; he was trying hard to fight it himself, whereas Murphy’d just thrown himself into it headlong, and had completely gone native, always banging on now about skips and bins, jumpers and plimsolls. But it wasn’t worth giving up the tower room to get rid of him.

“What, and deprive myself of Oscar Wilde? How could I?” He bit into his muffin with savagery.

The thing of it was, Murphy not only baked, and baked delicious things, but he also _cleaned_ , which didn’t fit with the rest of his annoying profile. He’d been genuinely horrified to learn that the college had assigned them housekeepers, and he would wait until they left for the day and break into their closet himself to steal the hoover. He didn’t observe traditional sides-of-the-room etiquette, either; Bellamy had more than once returned from the library to find his bed made, the carpet hoovered, and his desk dusted and straightened (though not overly so, just enough; he could still find everything, which made him irrationally angry because he couldn’t complain about it). True, Murphy wore his clothes without asking; but he also washed and put them away, and Bellamy couldn’t explain the small warm feeling in his chest when he opened a drawer to see all of his socks and boxers precisely folded into tidy squares.

“It’s true,” said Murphy complacently. “You’d miss my effervescent wit.” He popped the last bite of his muffin into his mouth and started packing his glass pipe.

Bellamy had no idea how Murphy had even managed to find cannabis, much less a pipe; presumably via the theatre. He himself was terrified at the thought of using drugs in the UK. They could be lose their visas and be sent home—or worse, be sent down from the university. But Murphy seemed unafraid enough for both of them, and smoked regularly; when he was high he told long meandering stories that couldn’t be even half-true, fabulous Footlights yarns usually involving Alan Rickman, Ken and Em, and more than once, Bellamy thought suspiciously, a supposed acquaintance who sounded an awful lot like Lord Sebastian Flyte.

That wouldn’t have been entirely impossible; even a humble working-class college like Burton had its share of the peerage, all reading for degrees in “land management” and otherwise dedicating their aristocratic brain cells to shagging and alcohol. Bellamy had scornfully imagined Murphy would make it his mission to get off with as many of them as possible, and was a bit surprised when, as term went on, Murphy showed no such inclination. Instead, when he wasn’t making Bellamy’s life intolerable, he devoted his nascent attentions toward pining over a young musicologist named Macallan, who seemed so blonde as to be nearly translucent, with pale eyelashes and eyebrows. Murphy declared Macallan’s rather syrupy, pedal-heavy interpretations of the Chopin nocturnes to be “sublime”; whereupon Bellamy, to his great credit, kept his thoughts on Longinus, and on Macallan’s unattractive pallor, to himself. He was nonetheless secretly relieved when Murphy lost interest in mid-term, and instead pursued a fiery Spanish engineering student so far out of his atmosphere she should have given him a nosebleed.

“I didn’t mean it literally,” he said, alarmed, when Murphy slumped in one night with a wad of brown paper toweling pressed to his face.

“What, that Raven Reyes should punch me in the nose? I’m sure you’re the one who told her to,” said Murphy, flopping histrionically onto the floor. “If this ruins my beauty, I’m suing both of you.”

“Spoken like a true American,” Bellamy said, and, almost against his will, wrung out a washcloth in cold water and brought it over to Murphy, who surrendered the paper towels and applied it to his split lip with a wince.

“How dare you,” he said. “My Quebeçois ancestors are revolving in their graves.”

“Quel dommage pour eux-mêmes,” Bellamy returned politely, without thinking.

“Tant pis pour toi,” Murphy shot back, and threw the flannel at him.

Bellamy seemed to spend a lot of time ducking thrown objects, around John Murphy. “Do you want a bag of frozen sweetcorn, to get the swelling down?” he heard himself asking, but Murphy moaned something that sounded negative.

“What I want is to get very high, and drink the last bottle of Prosecco,” he said, sounding rather more nasal than usual. Nevertheless he managed to shotgun Bellamy just fine, after a lot of wheedling, not to say whining, and after Bellamy had downed his half of the wine.

“We really shouldn’t,” he said, for the fifth time, already feeling drunk as Murphy sidled toward him on the floor, where they were sitting cross-legged. Apparently he wasn’t very convincing, because Murphy just rolled his eyes and grabbed Bellamy’s face in both hands before blowing smoke into it. Bellamy instinctively turned away and coughed, eyes watering.

“Oh for god’s sake—I know you’re a homophobic corn-fed westerner, but could you drop the affronted Protestant routine for one second and let me do this properly?”

Bellamy wondered where exactly Murphy thought Ohio was. He also wondered why he didn’t just tell him he’d kissed boys before—and for that matter, had sex with them. Instead he said nothing and let Murphy slot their mouths together, and this time he inhaled as Murphy exhaled. It was pretty good weed, maybe more sativa than indica, because he felt euphoric, and wanted to quote Yeats. He lay back on the carpet, blinking, somehow his fingers entangled with Murphy’s, not sure if he was more stoned from the weed, from the tart bubbles of the wine still stinging his nose, or from the bitter, smoky taste of Murphy’s mouth sealed over his own.

•

Murphy had a curious face, which Bellamy supposed looked better with stage makeup and viewed from a distance. His eyes were deep-set and heavy-lidded, with blunt features including a nose that could charitably be called strong. Bellamy himself was no stranger to odd facial architecture; his mom’s Filipino had mixed with his dad’s Irish in a way that had given him wide cheekbones, a broad nose, and freckles atop olive skin, but he thought he was passably good-looking, with curly black hair and a decent beard. Murphy’s face was strangely compelling, though, in its kind of ugly beauty, and Bellamy found himself thinking about it when he didn’t mean to be. A Renaissance Roman, he thought; Botticelli, Andrea del Sarto.

Unfortunately Murphy caught him looking up a sketch he vaguely remembered, a profile in red chalk, with a high forehead and aquiline nose.

“That looks like me,” Murphy said, ever alert, staring at the page over Bellamy’s shoulder whilst drying his mixing bowl with a tea towel.

“I guess,” Bellamy said, trying for casual.

“Um, that _really_ looks like me. Oh my god—is that why you’re looking at it?”

“No,” Bellamy said, and tried to close the book, but Murphy was too fast. “Give it back.”

“It’s library property,” Murphy informed him gleefully, holding it just out of reach. “You can’t jerk off on it.”

“I wasn’t—god, you’re so conceited.”

“No, I’m not. I know I’m weird-looking.” Murphy had kept his place with a finger, and looked down again, dispassionate, at the drawing. “And I guess so was Julius Caesar, poor bastard.”

“You look okay,” said Bellamy, meaning it to sound diffident; but he should have known better.

“You like how I look,” said Murphy. There was something unfamiliar on his face, an expression Bellamy couldn’t place.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“I said you look _okay,”_ Bellamy hedged. “You don’t scare babies, probably.”

“Coming from you, though, it’s a compliment,” said Murphy, and he’d put the book down and was standing closer to Bellamy’s chair than he’d been a moment ago. His blue eyes were half-shut, a slow, carnal smile spreading across his face. “You think I look good.”

“I guess,” Bellamy said again, heart thudding inexplicably. “I mean, sure.”

Murphy put a hand on either arm of the chair and leaned in close, so close that Bellamy had to fight not to cross his eyes. “I think you’re gorgeous,” he said, matter-of-fact. The moment stretched out, impossible. Bellamy couldn’t breathe. “But the room’s still mine.”

Bellamy stared at him another beat, wordless. Then: “You unmitigated _dick,”_ and he lunged for the book. Murphy threw the tea towel at his face; and they didn’t speak for the rest of the day.

•

For the most part, though, Bellamy was surprised to learn, Murphy left him alone to read, apparently because he himself was reading as well. Bellamy hadn’t expected his roommate to be so studious, which he was, albeit in an erratic, generally nocturnal, fashion. Bellamy never saw him in the faculty library, but books disappeared and new ones appeared on an almost daily basis. Bellamy also never saw him in lectures, but there were messy stacks of notes next to his laptop, so Murphy was clearly revising, even if Bellamy refused to acknowledge that they were reading the same subject. Whenever there was a Shakespeare adaptation at the arts cinema, though, they were both there, Murphy wearing glasses just like he was (Bellamy’s contacts dried out when he stared at the screen for too long). The set text for their year was _Measure for Measure,_ and he wondered if Murphy had already grown to hate the play as much as he had.

The day inevitably came, in those first few weeks, when they were both in the room working at the same time. But that afternoon, some sort of uneasy peace seemed to settle over the space, like the slanting light through the leaded window glass, and Bellamy hardly noticed Murphy was even there. He’d been reading slumped on their threadbare green sofa, which was passably comfortable if you avoided the springs; he had the Arden edition propped open over one knee, the Oxford edition over the other, and was staring at Terry Eagleton, willing something to make sense, when Murphy sat down on the floor nearby. He was wearing Bellamy’s blue Middlebury sweatshirt and a pair of ridiculously too-short denim cutoffs, and clutching a handful of handwritten pages.

“That shirt is mine,” Bellamy said, but Murphy ignored him in favor of opening his laptop and starting to type notes into it at blinding speed. Bellamy doubted he ever wrote essays on time; he was willing to bet they were all written in the first person, probably twice as long as they needed to be, and at least two weeks late. Murphy was quiet, though, at least, for once, and Bellamy gradually relaxed into the silence. After a while he got up and put the kettle on in the kitchenette, handing Murphy a wordless cup of tea with full-fat milk, no sugar, thinking about semiotics and wondering when exactly he’d learned how Murphy took his tea. When he handed him the mug, their fingers touched; Murphy just nodded his thanks.

Bellamy sat back down again, Murphy directly to the right of him, dark hair almost against his knee. He told himself to concentrate, but had to reread the same paragraph once more, and then again. Eagleton’s idea of the ideological surplus was a strangely disembodied—

“No, don’t stop,” Murphy said, and Bellamy startled, hand clenching automatically, when he realized his fingers were buried in Murphy’s hair.

“Shit,” he said involuntarily; but Murphy just leaned against him, for all the world as if they did this every day, and kept typing. At some point, probably to stop Murphy from habitually pushing his hair out of his eyes, Bellamy must have absently brushed it back from off his face himself, and then he’d just carried on—

Murphy moved almost imperceptibly into his touch, shoulder a bright hard point of pressure against Bellamy’s knee. He couldn’t stop staring at the top of John’s head, at his own hand resting there. Murphy’s hair was actually more dark bronzed blonde than brown, he realized, and the strands were silky between his fingers, which kept moving, combing through the tangles as if they had a mind of their own.

After a long time, during which Bellamy understood not a single word he read, he moved his hand to the back of Murphy’s neck. It seemed designed to fit there, so he settled it against the warm skin, firmly. Murphy made a low quiet sound and kept typing at his feet.

Bellamy had no idea what to make of any of this, so he decided to ignore it. It didn’t happen again.

•

It was harder, however, to ignore the way Murphy fussed over him the day he came back from football practice with a graphic, elaborate scrape down one shin, both elbows bruised and torn up, and a relatively tiny cut up by his hairline that just would not, would _not_ stop bleeding.

He’d tried out for blues because he’d played American football through senior year, though he’d given it up when he went to Middlebury, and just how different could soccer really be? He imagined it would be mostly running up and down the pitch, like _The Simpsons_ had depicted it, and as a result wasn’t prepared for the drama of an actual tackle, especially from an accomplished team of mostly burly Scotsmen and irate South Americans from Porterhouse.

“Jesus,” Murphy said, sounding genuinely alarmed, when Bellamy limped into their set shirtless, cleats still on and sprinkling blood everywhere like a watering can. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Pretty obvious,” grunted Bellamy. Goddamn scalp wounds, they always bled like you were dying. “It’s nothing, I’m fine,” and then belied this by unexpectedly sitting down in the doorway.

One of Murphy’s hands was on his uninjured knee and with the other he moved Bellamy’s wadded-up jersey to the side so he could look at the cut, fingers cool and somehow soothing. “Keep pressure on that, I’ll be right back.”

“At least I wasn’t punched in the face by a girl,” he joked, but Murphy was in the kitchenette running water and not paying attention. He came back with a wet tea towel wrapped around some cubes of ice, and fished a bottle of hydrogen peroxide out from under the sink.

“Why do you even have that?” Bellamy asked, wincing as Murphy dabbed it on his shin. They both watched it foam up with interest.

“You can bleach hair with it,” said Murphy, and Bellamy noticed some strands were lighter than others, maybe had been for days. He had the inexplicable desire to tuck them behind Murphy’s ears; to touch him again. He swallowed.

“For a part?” he asked, grudgingly feigning interest, and Murphy smiled—a quick sidelong one, while he busied himself with more peroxide.

“Yeah, I’m understudying Rosalind and needed to look more, I don’t know—sexier, according to the director.”

Bellamy was dangerously close to telling him he was already sexy when Murphy did something with the tea towel that made him yelp.

“Hold that there,” Murphy instructed, then went back beneath the sink and returned with a small bottle of something purple.

“Don’t, what is that,” Bellamy asked, but couldn’t see because there was blood in his eyelashes.

“It’s styptic powder, have you never cut yourself shaving?”

“Not often,” said Bellamy. Murphy shook his head and wiped Bellamy’s face carefully, almost tenderly, Bellamy thought, before shaking the bottle of powder and dusting it out onto the cut, cupping his hand so it wouldn’t get into Bellamy’s eyes.

“God, Bell, you’re a mess.” Something went through him at the nickname, a jolt like fear right down his spine and igniting something warm in his stomach. Only Octavia ever called him that, and—

“I’m fine _,_ ” he said again, trying to push Murphy’s hand away; but the cloth felt wet and cold and good, as Murphy cleaned off his eyelids and temples, frowning a little as he worked, and eventually Bellamy gave up and let him, because it did seem to be stopping the bleeding.

The strange thing was he thought he saw Murphy after that, watching from a distance, at more than one game, but he was always concentrating on the play and could never be sure; just a glimpse beyond the end of the pitch, of a dark green raincoat and a striped college scarf: the ember of a cigarette, a head bent as Murphy, or someone, turned and walked rapidly away.

•

@thejohnmurphiest: hey what are you doing for break

@blake_bellamy: what do you care

@thejohnmurphiest: you wound me, you know that  
@thejohnmurphiest: i care a lot  
@thejohnmurphiest: i care whether i’ll still have an irascible roommate for starters

@blake_bellamy: I can’t afford to go home, I’m staying  
@blake_bellamy: what about you

@thejohnmurphiest: well i’m definitely not staying NOW  
@thejohnmurphiest: i was going to go to london for part of it  
@thejohnmurphiest: catch a show  
@thejohnmurphiest: walk down tottenham court road at 2 am singing memory from cats  
@thejohnmurphiest: there’s the national theatre  
@thejohnmurphiest: and the british library  
@thejohnmurphiest: you could come with if you wanted

@thejohnmurphiest: lol did that break you

@blake_bellamy: you don’t really want my company

@thejohnmurphiest: why, do you turn into a werewolf when you rusticate

@blake_bellamy: god you’re annoying  
@blake_bellamy: stop pretending to be british, you’re from fucking toronto

@thejohnmurphiest: but it drives you so delightfully crazy why would i stop  
@thejohnmurphiest: you’ll go mad and be sent down  
@thejohnmurphiest: and then the room shall be mine mouahahahahahaha

@blake_bellamy: tell yourself whatever you need to

@thejohnmurphiest: hey quick question  
@thejohnmurphiest: have you ever heard of something called  
@thejohnmurphiest: gay chicken

•

They agreed on rules first, like duellists preparing to fire shots at dawn: the college bar, no hands allowed, only one drink apiece beforehand. The winner, they decided, would get the room over break. Murphy was so confident, it made Bellamy smile, but privately, to himself, so as not to give it away. Besides, he’d already imagined what it would be like to kiss Murphy too many times to count; had jerked off more than once angrily in the shower, striping the tiled wall with come. Pretending to kiss him wasn’t going to be any kind of a chore. Privately he resolved to make Murphy’s knees weak. Anyway, he’d try. It’d be worth it to have the room to himself.

So they faced off at the bar, each downed exactly one shot—and then Bellamy had jumped the count and gone in for the kiss before Murphy could react.

“You’ve done that before,” Murphy said, accusingly, once he had his breath back.

“What, kissed someone?” said Bellamy. He wiped his mouth and tried not to look smug, but was pretty sure he failed.

“Kissed a guy,” Murphy said.

“Maybe—why?” asked Bellamy, and he turned to the bar and took a foamy gulp of Guinness. Murphy tasted like Bailey’s and his mouth had been unexpectedly yielding.

“Fuck you,” said Murphy and took another half-step toward Bellamy, close enough so that he could feel the warmth of Murphy’s body through his shirt. “Do it again.”

“Are you daring me?”

“I dare you,” said Murphy, so they kissed again, to catcalls and whooping from the entire bar. When he pulled back, Bellamy thought he saw money changing hands.

“Scared yet? Calling it quits?”

“Not even close,” said Murphy, and this time there was tongue.

•

In the end it was declared a draw by Nate and Bryan, apparently the resident experts on gay makeouts, and for whatever reason, Murphy wouldn’t agree to a rematch. Bellamy didn’t care; the end of term had become unexpectedly difficult, academically. Bellamy had been through so many finals weeks at Middlebury that he thought he’d previously known the depths to which a brain can sink, when you most need it to be clever, to remember and regurgitate things promptly; but this was a whole new level of horror, which, he supposed, he should have anticipated, seeing as how he was currently studying at a university which had been founded in 1209, and had a long and noble history of driving its undergraduates completely batshit insane from stress. He was reading for too many papers at once, cramming in lectures, trying to drink from a firehose. For the first time in his life, though, he wasn’t bored. Maybe just underslept.

•

“You’re talking to yourself, Bellamy.”

“I’m _reciting_ , there’s a difference.”

“Just because you’re talking to yourself in Latin doesn’t make it less mental. Actually more so.”

“How else am I going to memorize it?”

“Look, I run lines all the time, and _I_ don’t—here, let me see it. What part are you—”

“Give it back, Murphy!”

“I can _help_ , okay, just don’t be a giant _tit_ about it.”

 _“You’re_ offering to help me.”

“Well, if it’s that or listen to your shitty hendecasyllabics all day.”

“How do you—”

“Why does it always surprise you that I’ve read a book? Do you honestly think I got into Burton by blowing someone? You know what, don’t even—just, I’ll say a line and you say the next one back, okay. _Ille mi par esse deo videtur_ …?”

“To me, he appears like a god; he even surpasses a god, who sits—”

“Wait, what happened to Latin?”

“Sorry, I’m—this isn’t going to work.”

“No, come on, translate if you want. Whatever you like. I’m helping. But why did you say _appears?_ Isn’t it _seems?_ To me he _seems_ like a god?”

“In Greek it’s φαίνεταί, which is more like, _becomes visible_. The same way gods would shimmer into view in the dust of the battlefield. Reveal themselves suddenly. To me he _appears.”_

“Sappho’s in love with _that_ guy? I thought she was in love with the girl.”

“No, she is. But maybe Catullus reverses that.”

“So you’re saying this poem is gay no matter what language it’s in.”

“Okay, Murphy, I think you’ve helped enough.”

“My god you’re right, this is super-gay: _tenuis sub artus / flamma demanat, sonitu suopte / tintinant aures_. Fire runs under my skin, my ears are ringing! Could this guy _be_ more dramatic.”

“You would know.”

“But it’s a direct address, though.”

“It’s—wait, what.”

“Catullus, he’s _telling_ Lesbia. Isn’t he? _te spectat et audit—_ you. Who watches and hears _you_.”

“I, I guess so. That’s not how it’s usually read.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s supposed to be unrequited and tragic. But that’s stupid. Why else does he pull out all the stops? You don’t bother trying to impress someone unless you’re still hoping.”

“You’re—that’s actually pretty—”

“Smart, Bellamy. You can say it. Go on, say I’m smart.”

“It’s…an interesting interpretation.”

“Bellamy Blake actually thinks I’m clever—why is this more exciting than a starred first?”

“Because one of those, you have a chance at?”

“You know what, fine. Mumble Latin to yourself all you want. I’m leaving anyway—”

“Murphy, wait, I’m s—Murphy?”

  
  


_II. Lent_

Bellamy tried to keep his head down during break, to study and not get distracted; he missed Octavia like a limb, and it was the first holiday they’d ever spent apart. But she was safe with Abby and Clarke, and it helped, more than he wanted to admit, that Clarke faithfully sent him long detailed screeds every night on WhatsApp while he was still asleep.

With a show of great reluctance, he and Murphy had exchanged phone numbers before the break, a decision which Bellamy had cause to regret when he received incoherent texts from the south of England, usually in the middle of the night, often with accompanying photos of Murphy in various stages of undress. But Murphy didn’t really start to abuse the privilege until he came back, and Lent term began to have its brutal academic way with them.

Shakespeare supervisions were every Wednesday afternoon in Dr Simpson’s set, also in the Tower Wing; the faculty offices were right across from their showers and lavatories. Even after an entire term, Bellamy would never get used to being in his bathrobe and pajama bottoms, with wet hair and a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, and running into his tutors while they were in business casual, although the tutors seemed calm enough about it.

They were all seated in two semicircles in front of Simpson’s mantlepiece, as though there were still a working fireplace there instead of a nonfunctional gas hob. Murphy was in the outer circle, to all appearances dozing while Simpson was taking them through _Troilus and Cressida_ line by line, and Bellamy had his massive Riverside edition open on an end table, taking notes in it in pencil, when he saw his phone light up, in his peripheral vision.

_stop looking at echo’s boobs_

He bit his lip in annoyance. He really hadn’t been looking, but it had been a conscious decision, one born of necessity and Echo’s blouse today, a deep-cut see-through paisley thing that showed a camisole underneath, and Bellamy was only human.

_unless you’re imagining me coming on them. then it’s okay to look at boobs_

The fuck? Bellamy could feel himself flushing, and bent closer to his notes.

_what, did that get to you?_  
_that totally got to you, didn’t it  
_ _my come spattered on her tits_

Bellamy’s dick gave a throb of interest and started to chub up. Fucking _Murphy_ —he shifted the collected plays into his lap, then subtly twitched his notepaper to cover the phone’s screen. Murphy started to clear his throat loudly, then more dramatically, increasing the volume until finally Simpson stopped in mid-line and asked if he needed some sherry.

“Why, yes, Dr Simpson, that would be—” he collapsed again in a fit of pointed coughing, glaring at Bellamy until he gave up and uncovered his phone again. Simpson poured everyone seconds on the sherry and passed around a china plate of horrible biscuits, the uniquely British kind that Bellamy thought of as punishment cookies, plain hard ones with granitic currants in them, as though flinty bits of dried raisin somehow made the things any less awful.

_I wouldn’t come until you told me to, and I’d look at you the whole time. I’d say your name_

Okay, this was getting out of hand. Fortunately, at that moment the group burst into excited argument about Pandarus, under cover of which he fumbled his phone into his lap and concealed it with the gigantic hardback, by this point also concealing something else, and managed to type with one hand:

_what tf is your problem_

_doesn’t seem like there is one_ , Murphy fired back. How did he text that fast? Bellamy felt like the room was getting smaller. His forehead was sweating. _I’m sexting you and you’re letting me come, I see no problems here_

_yeah well cut it out we’re in class. stop being such a fucking brat_

_make me_

Bellamy frowned.

_make you stop being a brat or make you come? I can do both at the same time probably_

_oh really_  
_not so straight after all are you  
_ _it’s because I’m super hot, admit it_

_you’re so full of yourself, you know that?  
you’re just begging to be shut up_

_how would you shut me up bellamy  
_ _tell me how_

“Mr Blake, did you want to disagree?” Simpson was asking, politely, with the upward lilt Brits used when they asked questions, the one that also could mean they were extremely pissed off at you.

“No, sir,” Bellamy said smoothly, from years of managing to have a personal life and a kid sister at the same time. “I think that assessment is quite accurate.” He wondered, a little, what he was assessing.

“I happen to agree,” Simpson said, after a pause. “It’s not as homoerotic as in Chaucer, but the relationship between Troilus and Pandarus is still palpably there, and Sedgwick would—”

Bellamy’s phone lit up in soft blue, and he lost the thread of the conversation again. He deeply and sincerely despised John Murphy.

_we don’t even really need her there do we_  
_just me on my knees, asking with my eyes if you’ll let me suck you  
_ _let me jerk myself while I’m swallowing your cock_

_jesus christ what is WRONG with you_

_nothing, this is working way better than i hoped_  
_i’d let you, you know that right? let you fuck my throat until you came down it_  
_let you pull my hair, slap me, drip come on my face  
_ _kiss it off my lips—_

Bellamy jumped at the sound of his own book slamming shut; every pair of eyes in the room turned to him. “Just, just having a bit of a turn,” he said, desperately. “Need some air, I, excuse me—” and he fled precipitously, clutching his coat and bookbag in front of him, mentally cursing John Murphy, whose flat blue gaze he could _feel_ , goddammit, between his shoulder blades as he all but ran from the room: amused, evaluating, curious.

•

@thejohnmurphiest: hey bellamy  
@thejohnmurphiest: hey  
@thejohnmurphiest: bellamy  
@thejohnmurphiest: hey  
@thejohnmurphiest: hey  
@thejohnmurphiest: b  e l l a m y

@blake_bellamy: WHAT

@thejohnmurphiest: nothing lol

@blake_bellamy: jfc I hate you

•

Given Murphy’s atrocious sleep hygiene, Bellamy wasn’t too surprised when his theatre schedule caught up with him, the bottom of Lent term. His troupe had just finished a run of _The Trojan Women_ set in a post-atomic dystopia, and Bellamy came home from the library that night to find John huddled on the floor next to the sink, having apparently just been sick into it. His face was pale and damp, eyes bloodshot and still ringed with mascara, and he couldn’t stand up on his own, even when Bellamy knelt to help him. Finally he managed to rinse off his face and crawl to bed, and Bellamy pulled back the covers and all but picked him up and deposited him into it. He lay there trembling, with what was clearly the beginning of a hacking cough.

“You sound tubercular. How were you even onstage tonight?”

“It was important, okay. I’m Hecuba.” He admitted he’d had to run offstage as soon as the curtain went down and be violently ill in the dressing room rubbish bin.

“You’re definitely running a fever,” said Bellamy, using the back of his hand, first on his own throat, then on Murphy’s, the way he’d always done with O when she was little. “Can you keep anything down?”

“Recent events would indicate no,” Murphy said, rueful. Bellamy sat down on the bed and tucked the sheets and blanket around him, wanting to do something but not sure what. Eventually he made a cup of weak tea with plenty of sugar, and left it by the side of the bed. He dimmed all the lights but one, and sat up reading, not wanting to leave him alone, for some reason he didn’t feel like naming.

Murphy woke up once but only to cough, complain, drink half the tea and pass out again. Around five Bellamy fell asleep in the chair, his copy of Seneca falling onto the floor. When he came around, the afternoon sun slanted through the windows, and Murphy was propped up on his pillow, a bright spot of color in each cheek.

“How are you feeling?” Bellamy asked. He checked his temperature again; if anything, Murphy felt more hot. This probably wasn’t just a twenty-four-hour virus; they should get him to the infirmary, make sure he didn’t have strep or bronchitis.

“Appalling,” said Murphy, but he smiled, mostly with his eyes; it was warm, and genuine, wasn’t anything Bellamy had ever seen on his face before, and it shocked him enough to double-take. But the smile flickered and vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Thank you. For staying with me.”

“Wouldn’t want you to die,” said Bellamy. He stretched elaborately, and retrieved his book. “You probably told everyone I’m trying to kill you.”

“If we’ve learned anything this year,” Murphy said, somber, “it’s how easy it is to murder your enemies.”

“Golden dresses that burst into flame,” Bellamy agreed. “Poisoned goblets. Or signet rings.”

“Or kisses,” Murphy said; and suddenly they couldn’t look at each other.  
  
“I could bring you some breakfast,” Bellamy said, studying the spine of _Six Tragedies_. He wondered what Emily Wilson would say about their situation. Two gentlemen; one room. Two households, both alike in dignity.

“Are you crazy, it’s tea-time,” said Murphy, and of course he was right, it was nearly three.

“Then I’ll make us tea,” Bellamy said.

They had an impromptu picnic on Murphy’s bed, plain table water crackers and Lemsip for Murphy (which he referred to as “Lemsick,” and threatened to throw up all over Bellamy, who just ignored him and made him a second cup), and cheese and apple sandwiches for Bellamy, with salad cream, a condiment for which he’d developed a debilitating fondness. While they ate they argued about Euripides, Brexit, student debt, the virtues and drawbacks of diets verging from paleo to vegan, breeds of dog (Murphy preferred Corgis; Bellamy, Irish setters), Twitter, Facebook, Imagine Dragons (this wasn’t actually an argument as they both hated them) and the National Health Service’s idiotic (in Murphy’s opinion) refusal to hand out antibiotics freely.

“Herd immunity,” said Bellamy, wisely, offering Murphy a peeled slice of green apple. He had no idea what that even meant.

Murphy accepted the slice. “Do you even know what that means,” he said, sounding peevish, then broke down coughing, and the picnic had to be interrupted to save the Lemsick from going everywhere.

“That was nice,” Murphy said, after Bellamy had put everything away and made himself a cup of tea (with two teabags, so he could stay up and work) and another for Murphy (chamomile, with a glass of water alongside). “You’re nice. Why are you being so nice?”

“I told you,” Bellamy said. He pretended to brush crumbs off his jeans so he didn’t have to look at him. “Don’t want your friends to think I murthered you in your bed.”

“Help, help, ho! Murther!” Murphy cried, weakly, which started them both laughing, and then him coughing again.

“You’re just doing it to yourself at this point.”

“Yeah, thanks for that, Bell.” What was—he looked down; Murphy had taken his hand, gripping it with some earnestness. His fever must be spiking, Bellamy thought, as it grew dark outside. “I mean it. None of them are here. You are. It means, it’s—thank you. You’re nice.”

“Don’t let word get out,” Bellamy said; but it started a warm spot glowing up high in his chest, which he almost hoped was the beginning of a cold. It wasn’t. Bellamy never caught cold.

He read bits of _Medea_ aloud to Murphy until he fell asleep, and sat up again that night, revising Seneca’s influence on _The Spanish Tragedy_ and surreptitiously watching Murphy as he slept. Around midnight it grew chilly; he cranked the dormer window shut, then went and got his duvet, and put it on top of John. It comforted him to take care of someone, in a way that reminded him obscurely of Octavia, and Ohio, and home.

•

The flag, however, was another matter.

When Bellamy had first come home to find the red-and-white fabric covering almost their entire door, he’d taken it down with grudging respect for its flagness—it _was_ Canadian, after all—and placed it, folded into a neat square, on Murphy’s desk chair. By the end of term he’d shifted to leaving it puddled on the floor right inside the doorway. Since Lent began, though, he’d taken to dropping it pointedly into the bin, careless of whatever damp used tea bags were already occupying said bin, to make a more aggressive comment about how Murphy wasn’t allowed to just, just, _decorate_ their shared space, especially not with rampant displays of nationalism.

Today, Bellamy felt, it was entirely too much; it was literally Presidents Day in the States (and a politely agnostic “bank holiday” here in Britain), but you didn’t see _him_ plastering _his_ tatty colonial imperialism all over their door, where the flag all but taunted him with its foot-wide maple leaf.

It was looking somewhat the worse for wear, at that, and Bellamy briefly considered setting fire to it. He opened the door and yanked it down—held up by push pins, this time, rather than bluetack, which irritated him even more—and instead began looking for the scissors.

He’d just severed the first red section from its white middle and was starting to cut around the maple leaf—carefully, for some reason, as if he were trimming a pie crust—when Murphy burst in as was his habit, in a whirl of movement and loose papers, and always, somehow, extra oxygen.

“What the fuck are you _doing?”_ Murphy said, slamming a stack of books down on his desk and lunging forward for the flag. Bellamy held both fabric and scissors above his head, easily out of reach. Like most actors—most good actors, anyway—Murphy was short, probably not even five-six, and Bellamy was almost six foot.

Murphy was also deceptively fragile-looking, though, as Bellamy discovered when one bony elbow drove into his midriff, knocking the wind out of him and the scissors from his hand. He was afraid they’d spear Murphy in the foot, but somehow Murphy’s arms were around him now and they were sailing back toward the floor like it was a defensive tackle and Murphy was the smallest linebacker in existence.

“Give it here,” said Murphy, sitting back up, his knees straddling Bellamy’s hips; but rather than reaching for the ruined shreds of flag, he was for some reason scrabbling at Bellamy’s fly.

“What the hell, why are you—what,” Bellamy said, confused. Murphy popped open the top button of his jeans and addressed Bellamy’s zipper with both hands, expression fierce and concentrated.

Bellamy had by this point dropped both halves of the flag, somehow, and his hands settled on Murphy’s narrow shoulders. He couldn’t breathe. Murphy shifted his weight again, settling on both knees between Bellamy’s legs; he felt the muscles in his thighs go tense and then suddenly lax, so that gravity pulled Murphy to the carpeted floor between his legs, which then tightened around him instinctively when Murphy reached through the opening of his boxers for his dick, which was rapidly, no, _already_ hard, goddammit. Murphy’s mouth was so close—

“You’re not,” Bellamy got out, shocked, but Murphy started jacking him immediately, the rough skin of his hand catching just right on the skin of Bellamy’s cock, going from zero to fifty and then eighty without hesitation, his hand slender but strong and, god, _fast_ , and the back of Bellamy’s head hit the floor with a muffled thunk. _Son of a bitch,_ Bellamy thought; then: _yes._

“Slower. Go slower,” Bellamy said, voice hoarse, and wrapped his fist in John’s hair where it was longest, tightening his fingers until Murphy actually paid attention and slowed to barely moving, both of them now breathing audibly. John’s hand was hot and delicate and—“Good,” he told him, “like that. Even slower. Fuck, that’s so good, you’re good,” and Murphy made a strange noise, somewhere between a laugh and a groan, then arched between Bellamy’s legs against the carpet, hard, and again, hand tightening convulsively around Bellamy’s cock. _Jesus christ_ , Bellamy thought, _did that just make him come_ —and the thought was too much, he was coming too, wet and messy all over Murphy’s fingers and chin and his own clothes and, somehow, half of the Canadian flag.

“You fucking _Yankee_ ,” Murphy said; but it lacked rancour, and anyway he was licking Bellamy’s come off the back of his fingers, leaving a long shining trail up the side of his hand. “Don’t be here when I get back.” He staggered to his feet, still in his raincoat and striped college scarf, and slammed the door behind him as he left.

Bellamy lay there for a minute, winded, before he used the rest of the flag to clean up. It was definitely staying in the bin this time. “It should be _more slowly_ , not _slower_ ,” he told the empty room. He had to clear his throat a couple of times to get the words to come out right.

•

Unsurprisingly, things became even more awkward after that, not that they hadn’t been before. Murphy continued to clean Bellamy’s side of the room, and kept baking pastry without comment, but he played more obnoxious music and sang along to it, in a nasal scratchy countertenor that pierced through Bellamy’s already challenged ability to focus on text (Bellamy couldn’t even speak Spanish, but he now knew every word to an especially annoying song in which the male singer promised his girlfriend he would make love to her very, very slowly).

Murphy’s other habits changed; he smoked more, stopped shaving, cultivated an irritatingly attractive neckbeard for some role, and wandered around their set in every conceivable state of undress, so that Bellamy often had to avert his eyes, face burning, from the sight of Murphy’s naked chest or hip bones or worse. Bellamy had no idea what was happening. Was Murphy trying to, to _seduce_ him into leaving, somehow? That didn’t make sense, except it did. Bellamy let his own beard grow out, and tried to spend less time in the room, but that only served to make him hyper-focused on John when he was there, acutely aware of the movements of his slender hands and his legs and the intense blue eyes that stayed on him a beat too long.

As if things weren’t tense enough, Murphy started having parties. It really only surprised Bellamy that it had taken him so long, although he supposed most people didn’t want to cycle all the way up the road to Burton, even for free alcohol. But again and again, now, he’d come back to the set at the end of a long slogging day in the library and find dozens of thespy strangers milling around, sitting on his bed, eating his biscuits, and usually listening to his music, which was admittedly better than most of Murphy’s (he had a particular taste for late New Wave).  
  
This couldn’t go on. But Bellamy wasn’t leaving. He _wasn’t._

•

Every night, now, Bellamy stayed in the library as long as he decently could, but it was a weeknight and even during term they closed at eleven; he refused to go to the college bar rather than his own goddamn room. He could hear the music all the way down the corridor of Tower Wing; "Love Will Tear Us Apart," which he supposed was Murphy's way of making a statement, or maybe he actually liked Joy Division.

He took a deep breath, shifted his book bag to the other shoulder, and headed up the curving stairs to their room, prepared, he thought, for anything. He expected to find half of Footlights in the room, and that half completely drunk; what he didn't expect was for Murphy to fling open the door and all but launch himself into Bellamy's arms, wearing a long reddish-blonde wig that suited him ridiculously well, and a slinky zebra-print dress, slit up on both sides all the way to the thigh, and cut low in front, almost to his navel. He smelled like Malibu rum, and Bellamy felt for a brief dizzying instant like kissing him again.

Instead he stood Murphy back on his (red, glittering) high heels and stepped around him resolutely. He dropped his bag on his desk and started arranging papers for the next day’s revision. “Midnight, Murphy. That's last orders. We agreed."

“Hurry up please, it's time it's time,” parroted Murphy, blinking and looking pleased with himself.

“Yes, Eliot, very clever. Put some bloody clothes on and get rid of these people,” said Bellamy. He directed a glare at his bed, where two troupe members were elaborately making out. Fortunately the duvet was still drawn up, so he wouldn’t have to change the linens.

“Why,” said Murphy, leaning back into his space. “Does it bother you, my wearing a dress? Does it bother you enough to move out?”

“For fuck’s sake,” said Bellamy. “I’m from Ohio, not the nineteenth century.” _Molly houses_ , he thought, irrelevantly, and crossed both arms over his chest.

“Could’ve fooled me,” said Murphy, one brow slanting up, and he had no business looking that comely in sooty black eyeshadow, stubble shading the hollow of his jaw and making his cheekbones stand out even more.

“Just how parochial do you think I am,” Bellamy demanded, incredulous.

“You tell me,” said Murphy, canting his hips back at an angle that he had to know was—

“Yeah, well,” Bellamy said, but he didn’t have a clever follow-up, so he just found his toiletries bag and headed down to the shower, deliberately ignoring Murphy’s outstretched hand and the laughter of his friends, who’d better be gone by the time he got back.

This little scenario repeated itself every night of that week, with Murphy’s dresses somehow managing to become even more slutty and risqué (there was a clingy blue one that was particularly distracting, worn with long curly dark hair into which Bellamy wanted to tangle his fingers). For whatever reason, this term had brought something out in Murphy, who seemed to find an increasing number of excuses to touch Bellamy; there were always fingers against the back of his neck when he worked at his desk, making him startle and curse and leave a long streak of ink marring a page of writing; or a palm at the small of his back as Murphy leaned around him to pick up some suddenly necessary item that Bellamy apparently somehow happened to be blocking without his having realized it.

Two could play at this, Bellamy decided. Instead of going down to the gym for morning workouts, he stripped with deliberate casualness to the waist for his usual crunches and curls, aware that his sweatpants hung low on his hips and that Murphy was only pretending to be asleep and/or hungover, the fringes of his eyelashes fluttering hastily shut when Bellamy stole a glance at him.

He smiled to himself, a little, and did another set of dips off the edge of the windowsill, window open to the early springtime, cries of birds hanging in the air like jewels. He raised and lowered himself slowly, easily, feeling sweat break out on his shoulders and chest, and decided that when Murphy moved out, he’d push both twin beds together to make one luxurious double.

•

The last Friday of term, however, turned out to be something of a last straw, or at least, their worst argument to date. Bellamy was tired; it had been a long week of revising, and a thankless one at that. The college library didn’t have half the books he needed, so he’d had to cycle down to the Ministry of Truth every single morning. He’d been rained on, had cars splash water onto him, and dropped his only copy of his Cicero essay into the gutter on his way to a supervision at St. Mary’s, only noticing when he arrived without it and then had to cycle back, looking for it in the verge with his cycle’s headlights as it grew dark and plucking individual soggy pages out of the hedges, ink drooling off the paper staining his fingers blue. After the supervision he’d realized he’d had nothing but tea all day, and gave up ideas of economy to buy plaice and chips at the fish shop; he stood eating them morosely in the pouring rain, comforted by the warm steam and the familiar bite of vinegar, and then paid another five quid he didn’t have for a late-night movie at the arts cinema, nearly falling asleep in the dark while a very young Gwyneth Paltrow flirted her way through some Austen adaptation (he was halfway through the film before he realized it was _Emma,_ because that was the character’s name). Surely, he thought, cycling home around two, the sharp corner of a book digging between his shoulder blades, surely Murphy wouldn’t be having an orgy tonight.

He regretted that thought when he reached their room. Murphy was sporting oak and the sounds coming from behind it weren’t the usual alcoholic revelry and post-punk; instead it was unsettlingly quiet, except for—Bellamy stopped, one hand on the doorknob, flustered. Murphy was rather higher-pitched than he’d imagined, he thought, feeling blood throb at his temples, unsure when exactly he’d imagined that. The day of the flag desecration, neither of them had even had time to make noise. He sat down, suddenly exhausted, and leaned against the wall.

He was toying with the thought of going down to sleep on a bench in the porter’s lodge when the door suddenly opened and a girl slipped out, still zipping up her dress behind her neck. Bellamy had to double-take, he was so used to seeing Murphy in drag at this point; but it was a girl he didn’t know, a slender brunette with a large violet hickey at the base of her throat, and another on her collarbone. She winked at him.

“Right,” said the girl, and laughed at him. “Sort yourself out, mate.” Bellamy stared after her, unable to speak as she flounced down the spiral staircase, humming. He waited a long moment before turning the doorknob slowly, to give Murphy time to get dressed or whatever.

Murphy, however, was sitting up in his bed, bare-chested, with the sheets gathered around his waist, fingering a cigarette out of the packet. They’d had fifty arguments about his smoking in the room, even sitting in the window, and for the most part Bellamy had won, but Murphy looked languid and fucking _post-coital_ and—Bellamy threw his stuff down on the floor and turned his back. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt, but he thought he might be enraged.

“Murphy,” he said finally, “You can’t just do that.”

“Can’t what—smoke in the room, or shag?”

“Don’t say _shag,_ for chrissake.” He rested both clenched fists on his desktop.

“Okay, _fuck_ then! So tell me, just exactly where am I supposed to fuck, Bellamy—on the stairwell? In the lavatory, for maximum romance? Or maybe in the senior common room, with an audience of tutors?”

“You shouldn’t”— _be fucking anyone_ , is what he wanted to say, then stopped, aghast at himself.

“What—shouldn’t fuck? No, Bellamy, that’s _your_ problem,” said Murphy, starting to sound annoyed. “You don’t fuck anyone, and you need to. What about that French girl—Gina? What about her? Or Echo, you’re always looking at Echo in supervision—which, by the way, yes she’s beautiful, but you deserve someone better. Someone more kind. Either way, you _desperately_ need to get fucking laid.”

Bellamy felt himself coloring. No one was supposed to notice how much he really liked Echo.

“Or what about me,” said Murphy. “Just how much more available do I need to make myself before you pull your nose out of the fucking _Areopagitica_ and notice I’m _right here.”_

Bellamy spun around, eyes narrowed, suddenly even angrier. “That’s not funny, Murphy.”

“I think it’s goddamn hilarious,” Murphy said, one corner of his mouth slanting up, his face half-hidden by shadow. “You just can’t get the stick out of your ass long enough to see it.”

 _To see what_ , Bellamy thought, mind snagged on the ambiguity.

“Fuck this, I need a cigarette,” Murphy said, and leaned over for his boxers, which were on the floor with the rest of his clothes. “You know I think I could handle the rest of your sanctimonious bullshit if you didn’t also judge me.”

“You make it pretty easy,” said Bellamy, in spite of himself.

Murphy laughed, the bitter nasty one, and stood up to pull on his boxers. Bellamy tried not to notice the way the single light from his bedside shone on his hips, his flanks. Murphy yanked his shirt on without buttoning it, then started putting on his jeans, which still had the belt in the loops. “Why do you think I’m so stupid? We’re in the same goddamn program—do you think I’m doodling in my notebook? I double-majored in theatre and lit at Bard, I’m not a—”

“Don’t finish that,” Bellamy warned.

“—whore,” said Murphy, which was so not what Bellamy was expecting that his heart sank, strangely.

“I don’t think that, okay,” he said. “It’s just. It was a long day. Look, I’m sorry. You can—”

“—what, have a social life? Wow, thanks for the generosity. You know no one likes a dog in the manger, Bell. If you don’t want it, let someone else have a go.”

With that he was out the door, barefoot, shirt still open over his chest, closing it with a quiet, pointed _click_ behind him. _It’s raining_ , Bellamy thought, irrelevantly, and sat down at his desk. He wondered why he felt so terrible.

  
  


_III. Easter_

Murphy spent the break, for some reason, at Torquay in Devonshire, and didn’t send Bellamy any texts. When he came back he seemed muted, somehow, as if someone had turned down the volume; Bellamy tried not to think about why, and mostly succeeded, and anyway he had so much work to do he could barely think about anything else.

Still, there were occasional eruptions; things would go along quietly for a few days, and then Murphy would apparently become frustrated by Bellamy’s studied, deliberate calm, or by something else undefinable; he’d lash out verbally, burn the muffins, and let Bellamy’s kettle boil dry, causing a couple of slammed-door fights. Or he’d revert to his previous tactics, however ineffective they’d proven: turn up the flamboyance and become even more seductive.

As when he planned to sneak into the Wessex College May Ball dressed as a waitress.

“That’s not going to work,” said Bellamy, recopying his Ovid translation onto clean sheets of paper for a supervision at, in fact, Wessex, in an hour’s time. He could use his laptop, but then he’d have to go downstairs to print, and really he preferred writing by hand anyway.

“And why not?” Murphy demanded. Bellamy refused to look up or in any way acknowledge that John Murphy was trying on fishnet stockings and a pleated miniskirt in their room.

“Don’t make me say it, Murphy.”

“What, that I’m not pretty enough?” He extended a leg, turned it to show the ankle. Bellamy didn’t look. The fishnets were black; the skirt was very short, short enough to show the lacy tops of his stockings, which Bellamy wasn’t looking at.

He squared up his paper and kept writing. “You don’t exactly look like a waitress.”

“What’s your great idea for gatecrashing, then—swim down the River Cam with your clothes on your head? Polevault over the college walls?”

“No, my great idea is that I’m not going.”

“Jesus, you’re boring. Were you born as a seventy-year-old, or has that happened gradually?”

Bellamy shook out his writing hand, which had begun to cramp up, and started a new page. The verses unscrolled beneath his fingertips like filigree; he shrugged the tension out of his shoulders and concentrated on Ovid’s fluidity.

> _Usus communis aquarum est._  
>  _Nec solem proprium natura nec aera fecit  
>  _ _nec tenues undas—_
> 
> _Water belongs to all of us._ _  
> _ _Nature did not make the sun anyone’s property,  
>  _ _nor air, nor water, cool and clear—_

Behind him he was aware of Murphy trying on different neckties in the mirror over the sink after putting on music, something slow and throbbing and vaguely Motown; and then before he could react, could do more than protectively jerk his pen away from the page so it wouldn’t leave a mark, his chair was being yanked backward, its feet catching on the folds of the ancient carpeting, and Murphy had slung one stockinged thigh over his and was—was in his lap.

“Are you _crazy,”_ Bellamy said, gruff, trying to get Murphy off him and stand up at the same time, which didn’t work. Murphy kept him in place with one hand on his chest, the other loosening his own necktie, half-singing along. Bellamy didn’t know where to put his hands and they wound up on John’s hips, which wasn’t a good idea. He could feel the edge of the fishnets with his thumbs, the place where the elastic lace stopped and the warm skin started. He swallowed, tried abortively to stand again.

Murphy didn’t let him up, just threw his head back and ground against Bellamy’s crotch.

“Okay you know what, that’s enough—”

“Don’t think so,” said Murphy, and slid his tie from his collar slowly. He wound it around Bellamy’s neck and pulled their foreheads together, swaying to the music.

“I am _trying_ to get some work done,” Bellamy said, but it came out sounding hoarse and throttled.

“You work too hard,” Murphy said, lips dangerously close.

“I have to keep my scholarship,” Bellamy said, which Murphy knew, because they both had the same scholarship. Murphy bent forward and breathed against the side of his neck, just below the ear, then took a half-step backward so that he was now standing, still straddling his knees, hips moving in a slow circle, skirt hiked up to an indecent degree.

“Why even have a scholarship to be here, if you aren’t actually here?” Bellamy didn’t have a good answer to this, partly because Murphy had planted one high heel on the chair between his legs, dangerously close to his crotch. Without thinking Bellamy wrapped his palm around the back of John’s calf, fingers brushing over the damp hollow at the back of his knee.

Murphy hummed low to the music, and slid his foot to the back of the chair, point of his heel scraping the inside of Bellamy’s thigh, knee close enough to Bellamy’s face for him to kiss, if he’d wanted to. But you weren’t supposed to touch.

He wasn’t sure if that rule still held when the dancer started undressing you, though. Murphy’s cool fingertips grazed his collar, undid the first button of his shirt, then the next. Murphy threw the necktie aside and placed both hands on the back of the chair, then bent until his hair was falling against Bellamy’s neck, and kissed the base of his throat, his breastbone. The miniskirt had ridden all the way up. Bellamy thought he was about sixteen measures of music away from throwing Murphy down on the floor and taking him like an Olympian ravishing a dryad in the _Metamorphoses_.

“Murphy, cut it out.”

“When you say it like you mean it, I will.”

“You’re such a fucking tease,” Bellamy said, so weakly it was probably drowned out by the music; but Murphy bent somehow even closer and nipped the lobe of his ear.

“I don’t have to be,” he said, voice husky and unexpectedly sweet. Bellamy closed his eyes. It was a trick. Murphy was an _actor,_ for chrissake. He’d be good at seeming like he actually liked Bellamy, but it was all designed to get him flustered and freaked out enough to leave—

“I have supervision,” said Bellamy, and disentangled himself.

He felt the imprint of fishnet on the palms of his hands even as he gripped the handlebars of his bicycle and pedaled harder, all the long way in the fog down to Wessex.

•

Bellamy was hurtling down the stairs, late to his final Milton seminar of the term, when he almost ran into Luna, who lived one floor down. She was a German biology third-year and a lesbian, or maybe a vegetarian, Bellamy couldn’t remember.

“If you’re planning to cycle to town, they have the road blocked off right outside the college,” she said, in her curiously unaccented English. Bellamy generally tried not to be offended that the European students all spoke better English than he did.

“What?”

“Accident,” she said briefly, and stuck her keys in the door.

He frowned; block off the whole road? “Why?”

She paused, hand still on her keys. “Whoever it was didn’t make it. Bicycle got dragged underneath a city bus. It’s a crime scene now, there’s constables and tape and everything.”

“Jesus christ. Did you”— _see anything_ , he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

“Just a gown, caught in the front wheel. A foreign student, that’s all anyone would tell me.”

Suddenly his heart was in his throat. Tonight was high table, and Murphy wasn’t back yet. He rode like a crazy person on his cycle, always showing off. Once Bellamy had seen him cycling away from the Ministry of Truth in the rain, eating a sandwich with both hands.

“Thanks,” he said to Luna, who nodded and went into her room. Bellamy dropped his book bag and sat down on the steps, digging out his phone.

_you okay?_

He sat there a moment feeling winded and numb, and curiously terrified, but also kind of stupid. Of course it wasn’t John. It wasn’t like he hoped it was someone else, either. He added:

_road’s blocked off jsyk, you’ll have to come up to college the back way_

—so he would seem less like an overprotective brother. But he’d spent his entire life being an overprotective brother; the instincts were fused into his spine.

He told himself to stop being an idiot, and cycled (being extra-cautious on the slick brick streets) down to Brasecliff, where he had no idea what anyone said over the course of the next three hours, because he kept surreptitiously checking his phone. Nothing. It was a Thursday and Murphy didn’t usually have rehearsals in the daytime on weekdays, not unless they were about to open, which they weren’t—he was playing Angelo in _Measure for Measure_ , but they weren’t performing until well after examinations.

Bellamy cycled back up the regular way in the dark and wet, headlamp wobbling and making streaks of silvery light in the falling rain. The road was open and quiet, with very few cars; there was no sign there had ever been an accident at all. It was all going to be fine, things were always fine and being overly imaginative didn’t help anything, though god knows he’d done it enough when O first started dating and going out at night with groups of friends. He’d tried not to make a nuisance of himself, but more than once he’d been pacing when she came home, and had to sprint for the sofa and pretend to be casually asleep so she wouldn’t know.

“Hey, asshole,” he said, when he opened the door of their room. Murphy wasn’t there.

 _He’ll be downstairs_ , Bellamy told himself, fastening his cheap rental gown; _he’s probably already in the senior common room throwing back sherry_. Bellamy’s tutor, a somewhat sententious political philosopher named Marcus Kane, had invited him to high table, an event which Bellamy had evaded all term despite the free wine. The formal occasion made him uncomfortable, with its waiters and courses; the first time he’d gone, he’d never seen a salt cellar and had liberally salted his coffee, thinking it was sugar.

But Murphy wasn’t at high table either, and Kane talked his ear off about Habermas and the Frankfurt school, while Bellamy sent another couple of increasingly angry texts from his lap ( _where the fuck are you murphy, check your goddamn phone_ ) and tried not to think of the worst-case scenario, pushing around new potatoes and some hideously overcooked greens on his plate, barely tasting the wine. The mistress wasn’t there, possibly dealing with whatever had happened, but the rest of the college seemed to be present and everyone was behaving normally. Kane didn’t know anything about the accident, because he never left his office, and Bellamy didn’t even know if it was someone from their college, although no one else would have come that far up the road to Burton. Surely if it were Murphy, there’d be an announcement or something. He should use his phone to check the local news, though it was usually of the “local cow falls over” variety. Besides, no one knew who they were; they were just Americans. Kane was saying something about Brexit and Bellamy couldn’t follow at all; cold sweat gathered at the small of his back. He supposed he could find someone, and ask. He didn’t want to ask.

He’d never looked forward more to pudding in his life (a kind of watery-looking chocolate custard) and made his excuses, shoving back his chair and fleeing precipitously back to the tower wing, papery gown flapping behind him—then turned around halfway and headed to the gate to ask the porters. He dreaded opening their door and finding John not there, and the room dark and empty. He didn’t know how to do this. If something had happened— _you’d get to keep the room_ , his brain informed him, and he recoiled physically, almost running into one of the corridor walls. Fuck, he didn’t—he didn’t _want_ the fucking room, he wanted Murphy to be okay, to come flouncing down the hallway being too loud and too fabulous and too much and _alive_.

He stood there a moment, gathering himself, willing himself to turn the corner into the porter’s lodge. He had a vivid memory of John’s hands on his face, firm yet gentle, blotting off dirt and blood that time he’d come off the football pitch all cut up. Of John’s sidelong, almost secret smile over a cup of tea when they were in the set reading together, quietly, not needing words. Jesus, he was an oblivious jerk. They were—they were _friends,_ when had they become friends?

“Alright then, Mr. Blake,” said George, the night porter, from over the top of his newspaper. “And a good evening to you.”

“George,” said Bellamy. He tried to read the headline upside down but it was about the European Parliament, with a picture, for some reason, of the Duchess of Sussex. He steadied his voice so he wouldn’t sound frantic. “I heard there was a cycle accident earlier?”

George was from Bury St. Edmund’s and had never hurried in his entire life. “Aye. Had the road blocked off, they did.” He turned a leisurely page.

“Yes—do you know who it was?”

“Wasn’t here yet, but we can find out. Gladys?” the porter called over his shoulder, then got out of his chair and sauntered back to consult with her.

Gladys was one of the housekeepers and seemed to be trying to leave, tying a hideous bright pink nylon scarf over her hair and fussing with her handbag. They had an exchange Bellamy could barely understand, because it was entirely in East Anglian; all he could catch was Gladys insisting, “Dead ‘ee was, stone-cold dead.” This was going to kill him.

After an eternity, George wandered back to the front desk, then—Bellamy could hardly believe it—actually extracted a pocket watch and started winding it, for all the world like a Dickens character. “Sad business, that. Foreign chap, got pulled under the bus and straightaway killed.”

Bellamy though he might be about to leap over the half-door and strangle him. “Yes, but _who was it?”_

George restored his watch to his pocket and Bellamy felt his eye twitch. “Couldn’t say,” he admitted. “Probably from one of those countries where they ride on the wrong side—visiting fellow in history, Gladys says, from Wessex. One of these days—” but Bellamy was off again, running for the tower wing and taking the narrow, deep-cut stairs three at a time.

He flung open the door to the room and Murphy stood there in an unbuttoned shirt and his boxers, rubbing at his wet hair with a hand towel, blinking. “Bellamy? What’s got you so—”

“Come here,” Bellamy said, but didn’t wait, and just hauled John into a fierce hug. Murphy came without protest, which should have surprised him but didn’t, because god— _god,_ he smelled like rain and car exhaust and Bellamy _cared_ about him. He buried his face in the side of John’s neck and just breathed, shaky.

“Bell?” said Murphy, tentative; and then his hands went around Bellamy’s waist, and he held on. “Hey, it’s—it’s okay, I’m right here.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Bellamy told Murphy’s neck. He dragged aside the shirt’s collar, mindless, until he got to skin; it was surprisingly soft, where the beard ended.

“Uh, okay, what’d I do this time,” said Murphy, and tried to disengage, but Bellamy wouldn’t let him.

“You don’t check your fucking phone,” he said, and then stopped fighting the impulse, and bit down, once, and then kissed the bare skin of his shoulder, muscle yielding over bone. Murphy flinched but didn’t try to move away again. He tasted like salt and something floral, probably body wash.

“Right,” he said, slowly, “and I guess if we were out of milk or something and you wanted me to drop by Sainsburys that would annoying, but—Bellamy, what the hell are you doing?”

“This,” said Bellamy, feeling insane, and pulled back just enough to kiss him.

This time the kiss was warm and close and real, completely unlike their fake makeout in the college bar. Murphy was already pressed against him chest to thigh, one knee between Bellamy’s, and when Bellamy slid a hand up to his jaw to angle it, so he could kiss John’s mouth open, he made a muted pleased sound and let him in, his tongue meeting Bellamy’s halfway, not a bit tentative, and Bellamy felt something wild and protective rise up in his chest and crowd out what was left of his self-control. He all but chased Murphy’s mouth, when he pulled away.

“You like boys,” Murphy said, his voice low and triumphant. “Admit it. You like a boy.”

“No,” said Bellamy, and then flinched. “I mean, yes, I like guys. It’s not a _secret_ , okay, I just don’t—”

“You like _me.”_

This time, the denial died before it even made it to his mouth. He closed his eyes, jumped a little when he felt Murphy’s hand against the side of his face. He turned toward the warmth anyway, pressed an unthinking kiss to the inside of Murphy’s wrist. Kept his eyes closed.

“Oh god. You _really_ like me.” Murphy’s hand slid up into the curls at the back of his neck, and his other hand moved from bicep to shoulder. “And you’re not drunk?”

“I had wine at dinner,” he said, voice thick. “Speaking of which _, where have you been?”_

“At an audition. Why?”

Bellamy shook his head, still upset in spite of himself. “There was an accident on the main road, a cycle got hit and I thought, I thought—”

“You thought something happened to me,” Murphy finished. “I got the part, by the way, thanks for asking—wait, is this why you’re kissing me? Because I’m not dead?”

“If,” Bellamy started, but he couldn’t finish.

“Jesus, Bell, calm down. Since when are you such a fucking dad?”

 _Since always_. “Murphy,” he said, and that was a mistake; at the sound of his own voice saying Murphy’s name he felt himself weakening and John laughed, disbelieving, a puff of warm air across his face, and their mouths came together again like it was easy, like everything about this was easy and nothing else mattered. Murphy tasted like tea and cigarettes and when Bellamy moved back to breathe, John’s arms wound around his neck and pulled him down again.

It started out still a little careful, but turned hot and sloppy and uncollected so fast it made Bellamy’s head swim. “Fuck,” Bellamy said, dazed, and surged forward, crowded John up against the rough brickwork of the room’s wall, pressed him against it and slid his hands up inside Murphy’s shirt to feel the warm, trembling skin of his bare chest, his heart beating, his ribcage moving up and down, and kissed him some more. It was heady and magnetic and melting, everything he wanted from a first kiss, a real one, John already panting into his mouth and moaning. Bellamy fucked his mouth with his tongue, hips moving against John’s in the same rhythm. He wanted to take care of Murphy. He wanted to hold him down so he couldn’t move and make him feel good. He thought he might be already kind of in love with him.

“Take me to your room,” Murphy said, breathless, and Bellamy couldn’t help it, he laughed.

“Why can’t we go to yours?”

“It’s my roommate, he’s a total dick.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy admitted, “he kind of is.”

“He acts like he’s some kind of saint, or my moral tutor, but he has a giant hard-on for my—ow!”

“Stop talking,” said Bellamy, and let go of the nipple he’d just pinched, hard.

“Yes _sir,”_ said Murphy, eyes wide and mocking, and Bellamy was going to fuck the sarcasm out of him if it took him all night, which, hopefully, it would.

•

Bellamy couldn’t move. That was fine, because apparently Murphy couldn’t either; he was plastered against Bellamy’s side, sleek and naked, fitting with impossible perfection against him, as Bellamy lay sprawled on his back on the bed, and did something he almost never did: just let his brain go completely offline, for long, blank, glorious minutes, barely coming around when Murphy got up to get the duvet and put it over them, muttering something Bellamy couldn’t parse. They’d finally lost all of their clothes and made it to the bed, after Murphy’s desk (“I thought you said you were going to fuck me! Have you started yet?” _“Shut up, Murphy—”_ ), the sofa, and then the floor. Bellamy felt boneless, almost weightless, and really, really tired.

He woke much later, with the light on and Murphy still nestled close, strands of his hair stirring whenever Bellamy breathed. He raised his head and looked at the room. Everything was a mess.

“Go back to sleep,” Murphy complained, but Bellamy didn’t listen. He reached to pull John closer but he was already twisting around to meet him, like liquid satin in his arms. They kissed until Murphy broke it off and settled back down on Bellamy’s chest. He rested his chin on his hands and looked up at Bellamy with that new unguarded expression on his face, a total lack of exaggeration and disaffection that Bellamy thought he should find terrifying, but didn’t.

“You okay?”

“Are you serious?” said Bellamy, voice rusty. He cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you. My phone ran down, I only read your messages when I got back.”

“It’s fine,” Bellamy said again, and hoped they weren’t talking. He ran a hand through his hair, then tried not to rub his eyes. He badly needed to take out his contacts. But John was naked, and warm, and right _there—_

“Easy, tiger,” said Murphy, as Bellamy slid both hands down to his ass; but he let Bellamy grab him and pull him, and they both moved together until they were sitting upright, Murphy in his lap, legs wound around his waist. Bellamy mouthed at his collarbone, kissed the hollow of his throat, thought about getting up to bring him a glass of water. Murphy reached out one finger and touched the dimple in his chin.

“How do you shave in there?”

“I don’t.”

From this angle, John was looking down at him, a little. They tilted their heads until their foreheads met. “Is this weird? This is going to be weird, isn’t it.”

“Only if you make it weird.”

“Bell, I make everything weird. It’s kind of what I do.”

A small shock rippled through him, ending where his dick was pressed against the inside of Murphy’s thigh. He slid his hands up to brush his thumbs over Murphy’s nipples. “Call me that again.”

John smiled down at him, the curving, private one that made him want to—he’d thought _hit_ him, all this time, but maybe after all it was kiss him. “Can you come again, Bell?”

“Yes,” said Bellamy eloquently, instead of demanding _just how old do you think I am_ , because if they talked they’d only argue, but John was shifting on the bed to take Bellamy in his mouth, even though he must taste like latex, and Bellamy let him; laced his fingers behind John’s neck and stretched his legs out and let John settle between his thighs and make him hard again.

“I’d ride you, but I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school,” Murphy said, and let a thin string of saliva fall into his hand. He tightened his fist around Bellamy’s cock and his hips jerked up involuntarily.

“Did you just quote _Fight Club?”_

“Do you want to talk or fuck my face?”

“Yeah,” said Bellamy, helpless with lust already. “Yeah, it’s gonna be weird.”

•

They didn’t have to sit exams this year, as it was only their first, and neither of them was writing a dissertation at the moment, so the next few weeks passed in a blur of sex, picnics on the floor of the room at midnight followed by more sex, and, on rare occasions, lying in the grass out by the college pond in the sun reading. Bellamy finally finished all of the _Metamorphoses_ in Latin, whereas Murphy declared himself a newly minted modernist and seemed to be making his way through Woolf, although his copy not infrequently fell to the side when Bellamy needed to kiss him stupid, which was a lot.

They pushed the beds together in the morning after the first time, and if Luna heard anything through the floors, she was tactful enough not to say so. It became, Bellamy thought to himself, incredibly convenient to share a room. No walks of shame, no furtive skulking trips to and from the lavatory whilst checking the hallway first. Everything went on as it normally did, except for the sheer numbers of orgasms involved, and having to launder the sheets more often. They argued just as often, but the arguments tended to end with wall-slamming sex, so neither of them seemed to mind, or anyway not enough to stop. Bellamy got used to coming at least once almost before he’d even opened his eyes in the morning, Murphy writhing against the mattress and making choked, desperate, indecent sounds around him while Bellamy stroked his hair and told him he was good, suck harder, yes, so good, just like that, such a good boy, fuck, _yes._

Bellamy wasn’t thinking about much of anything, certainly not the future, even though John was going to Athens for the summer, where they were performing _The Birds_ in the Theatre of Dionysus (“—and, you’re gonna love this: we’re doing it in _Greek._ ” “Murphy, you don’t know Greek.” “Right, which is where _you_ come in!”) and he was going back to Ohio. There was no point in thinking about anything, or trying to figure it out; they both seemed to know instinctively they were in a bubble made of thinnest glass, a strangely protected but ultimately fragile space that wouldn’t bear much inquiry. _The forest of Arden_ , thought Bellamy, when he couldn’t sleep, listening to John breathe in the darkness; then, thinking of the Eclogues: _Arcadia._

Cambridge lay in a valley, or, as Murphy called it sardonically, “the pestilential fens”—but as if a dam in the sky had been torn down, right after exams the endless fog and damp gave way to brilliant, pearling sunshine. It poured down on the college, lit up the green in wet emerald, gave the entire town a kind of hallucinatory, shimmering beauty that recalled Saxons in glittering mail and battles and great deeds. Everyone was drunk with it, a little frenzied, especially when Summer Time kicked in and the days went on until 10 pm; there were dinner parties and dances and student performances of Shakespeare in every college garden.

Bellamy attended all the nights of _Measure for Measure_ , mostly because it was (inexplicably) a BDSM production, so he got to see Murphy in a shiny black PVC catsuit, and besides, there were strawberries and champagne for intermission. During the wrap party he accosted Murphy in a nearby bathroom, discovered he wasn’t wearing anything under the catsuit, and had to shove his hand down his own pants while he sucked him off. He cleaned up with rough brown paper towelling, and then they went back outside hand-in-hand and lay in the forbidden grass for a long time, long enough to see the summer triangle come up. Bellamy pointed the stars out to him one by one, John’s head pillowed on his thigh, their Arabic names: Deneb, Altair, Vega.

 

 

_IV. Five years later._

Bellamy never read magazines, but the chemist was taking forever to fill his allergy prescription, so he pulled a copy of _Marie Claire_ off the rack, not least because John Murphy was in the group photo on the cover.

STARFALCON: HOTTEST COVEN IN THE GALAXY! read the headline. Bellamy didn’t know any of the other actors, but he’d have recognized John’s face in the dark, even dressed as he was in a costume like a purple-and-black jumpsuit, with a strange haircut that made him look older.

He wound up buying the magazine so he could read more about _Starfalcon_ , which was a sci-fi show apparently filmed in Cardiff, and had almost been cancelled but was saved at the last minute, thanks to a vigorous campaign by its fans involving sending the producers, for some reason, boxes of blackcurrant lozenges. It was now in its second season, and honestly, Bellamy thought, looked pretty terrible; but one paragraph caught his eye, and he read it over and over:

> _By far the biggest revelation this season has been the introduction of John Murphy’s villainous Dr Pentacle among our beloved crew of witty interstellar witches. Pentacle’s profound moral ambiguity (played with slippery grace by the ridiculously gifted Murphy) lends real depth and gravity to a show that otherwise risks becoming mere ensemble space opera; Murphy is a talent to watch, as well as clearly a serious actor, a former member of Footlights who’s tackling_ Richard II _this summer at the Barbican._

It was June, and Bellamy had just arrived for the first year of his postdoctoral fellowship, three years of funding that would allow him to concentrate on his Milton-in-Latin book without having to teach endless intro lit sections or worry about tenure. He wondered whether Murphy were still in Cardiff, or if he were in London by now, rehearsing. He wondered if Murphy would even want to see him, after everything. He decided there was only one way to find out, and he could only hope the last email address he had for Murphy still worked.

> _Dear Murphy,_
> 
> _I know, it’s been a really long time. I kind of got eaten by my PhD. Sorry about that. You were right, it was probably a bad idea, but I’ve been doing this so long now I don’t know what else *to* do._
> 
> _Anyway, it was the end of me and Clarke, for sure. We’re still friends, though, and she says hi, or she would, if she knew I were writing you. She stayed in Ithaca, so I could be close to Madi. Madi’s a great kid—stubborn, like me I guess, but smart like Clarke. She’s so funny, you wouldn’t believe the stuff she says sometimes. She just turned four, and didn’t talk at all until this year, and then one day at breakfast she said, “I dislike this particular kind of jam.” You’d like her, I think. I already miss her like hell._
> 
> _That’s actually why I’m writing—believe it or not, I’m back at Cambridge. I just got a postdoc and will be at St. Mary’s for the next three years. It’s nothing like Burton, but it’s good to be here again._
> 
> _Sounds like your show is doing well, so congrats. Anyway, if you wanted to get together, I could come up to Londinium sometime. It’s always good to get away from the pestilential fens. Or you’re welcome here. When was the last time you went punting?_
> 
> _xx Bellamy_

•

Murphy, predictably, lounged in the bottom of the boat, looking out across the Backs and desultorily eating cherries. Bellamy didn’t actually mind; he liked punting. He’d rolled up his shirtsleeves and the sun felt good on his shoulders, loose and warm.

“So...Dr Pentacle? Really?”

Murphy shrugged. “Keeps me off the streets.” He was wearing sunglasses, a white t-shirt with the neckline somehow cut down even lower, apparently with scissors, showing his collarbones, and a brown leather jacket. When Bellamy had met him at the train station (after changing his own shirt four times, cursing) he almost hadn’t recognized him, except by height; Murphy was heavier, had filled out into muscle and breadth of shoulder, and it felt different to hug him, but good. It was hard not to kiss him on instinct; harder to let go.

“I guess I just never saw you playing villains.”

“He’s not a villain! He’s...misunderstood, with a tragic backstory. Anyway my hairline started to recede, so this is my future; I may as well accept it.” He had a sort of goatee in the show, but had shaven it off to play Richard, he’d said.

They had caught up so seamlessly, just walking from the station to the boathouse, that it wasn’t like any time had passed at all. Murphy’d had a serious boyfriend, another actor, but didn’t now. He had a cat named Bosie; he showed Bellamy pictures on his phone of a serene-looking brown tabby sleeping in sunbeams, washing its ears, gazing at nothing. Bellamy showed him pictures of Madi, and they agreed that she had Clarke’s determined mouth and chin, but Bellamy’s coloring. Murphy’s hair looked normal again, softer than it had in the photograph, less spiky. Bellamy had to put his hands in his pockets to keep from touching it. He had forgotten how disarmingly sweet Murphy could be, when he wanted to. When he liked someone.

“Wouldn’t you’d rather be doing films?”

“I don’t mind television. It’s a steady income, anyway until we get cancelled. Whereas I see you’re still sponging off the university.” It was an old argument, and not one Bellamy had ever liked, so he changed the subject, moving the pole from one side to the other evenly, pushing them through the quiet green water.

“Do you remember when we went to Grantchester with Luna and Raven? I thought Raven was going to hit you again.”

Murphy eyed him ruefully, then threw a cherry pit at him. “Okay, truce. How about we get through one whole afternoon without fighting? Can we do that, Bell?”

At the sound of the old nickname, Bellamy felt a wrench of something like grief, followed by a fondness that weakened him. He’d loved John, loved him terribly; why hadn’t they worked out?

He swallowed. “I won’t pick a fight, I promise. It’s just—it’s really good to see you again.”

“You too,” said Murphy, and trailed one hand in the water. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to.”

“Are you kidding?” said Bellamy. “Cambridge isn’t the same, without you.”

“Do you have a nice room?”

Bellamy laughed. “I’m a fellow at St. Mary’s, I have a set—living room, study, kitchen, bedroom. The view down to the garden is incredible.” Even though, that very morning, he’d been standing by the window blearily with a cup of tea wondering what drunken undergraduate had thrown a pair of white briefs over the wrought-iron fence. “What about you—how’s London?”

“Expensive,” said Murphy. “I’m flatting with one of my co-stars—you’d like him, Monty Green. He’s a good guy. Makes kombucha.”

Bellamy didn’t know what that was, nor was he going to admit that he’d watched every available episode of _Starfalcon_ twice, and that Monty’s character Athame was one of his favorites, with his loyalty and sunny good cheer, as well as the violent alien brother-and-sister soldiers, Cauldron and Chalice. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about Pentacle, who reminded him of John at his worst; though sometimes, in reaction shots, he could see the John he’d fallen in love with: reflective, percipient, far more gentle than anyone had ever given him credit for.

He let the pole float for a bit and sat down in the bottom of the boat, unwrapping lunch. Packed sandwiches were oddly one of the things he’d missed most about Britain, and there was something ridiculously reassuring about tuna and sweetcorn on wholemeal bread. As was John yanking off his sunglasses and almost snatching his half of the first sandwich out of his hands.

“Oh my god,” he said, around a mouthful, “I haven’t had bread in a year. Tell me you have more of these.”

“Ploughman’s lunch, and some kind of curried chicken,” he said, looking in his satchel. He also had a very good bottle of pinot gris, back in his set, and they hadn’t talked about dinner, but you could now get excellent Thai takeaway in Cambridge, and if John could stay—

“Marry me,” Murphy said, and Bellamy knew it was a joke, except the punt was lurching to the side as John went onto his knees. Bellamy rolled his eyes.

“Theatrical as ever,” he said. “This isn’t Henry James, okay.”

“No, because I’m not speaking in full paragraphs,” Murphy agreed. “But I never said it, when we were at Burton, so I’m doing it now. We were in love. You should have married me, not Clarke.”

“You’re holding a sandwich,” Bellamy felt he had to point out. The punt drifted slowly into the far bank, where a willow tree’s long thin branches fell around them like a silvery beaded curtain.

“Doesn’t matter,” said John, but he put it down on the till. “I wanted to ask you to, all the time.”

“We _fought_ all the time, John. You said you hated me.”

“Only because I wanted to be John Murphy-Blake and wear your stupid ring and never be apart from you, and I knew you wouldn’t say yes.”

Bellamy couldn’t move. “You. You wanted to ask me to marry you.”

“Well, really I wanted _you_ to ask _me_ , but given your personality I realized that was probably—”

“What if I’d said no?”

Murphy’s eyes flashed blue, but his facial expression didn’t change. “Well, you’d still be divorced with a kid, just like you are now. But you wouldn’t have a second chance with me, dumbass.”

 _A second chance._ “What if I’d—what if I said yes?”

Murphy reached out and took one of Bellamy’s hands between his, carefully. His skin felt just the same, softer maybe. There was something on his face Bellamy hadn’t seen before, and he’d watched Murphy acting for enough years to know that whatever this was, it wasn’t that.

“Then I’d be living with you in Islington, not Monty. Or coming down on the train to see you every week. God, Bellamy, why did you—you had to know how much I—”

“I did,” he said, and bent his head to kiss John’s knuckles, then the familiar bone of his wrist, and the tender inside of his forearm, with a wash of relief like rainwater. “I mean, I know now. I mean, I do.”

For once in his life, John Murphy let him have the last word.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic comes to you courtesy entirely of the Murphy show (6x01), as well as Richard and Bob being ridiculous and flirty at cons. I wrote it during an especially crazy period in my brain, so none of this would exist without [bettsfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts) and [expatgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/expatgirl), who gave me endless prompts and lines of dialogue to write around like they care about my mental health or something. I adore them. Betts was her usual brilliant beta self and anything that still sucks is my fault. You can see Andrea del Sarto's study for the head of Julius Caesar [here](https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2008.367/). The names of Cambridge colleges have been changed, but not very much.
> 
> This fic is for [pietoperdition](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pietoperdition), because she deserves the world. Thank you so much for reading; it means more to me than I can say. (Now, with its own conveniently rebloggable [tumblr aesthetic](https://aeriallon.tumblr.com/post/184933587956/the-tower-room-16k-by-aerialiste-fandom-the-100)!)


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